OK folks,
Today I am brining you a review of ASUS TUF Series Sabertooth x58 motherboard. To be honest, the market is flooded with x58 motherboards, but until now, the sub 15k price range was dominated by Gigabyte and MSI motherboards with very little offerings from anyone else worth considering.
To be frank, when I first read the press release of this motherboard, the first thing pop into my mind was "Errr! what is that?". But that's the thing, it made an impression right away. It was different from other boards in the market. And when I first got to see it first hand, I asked ASUS to send it to me for the review and they obliged.
So lets begin without wasting more time.
===================================================
What is TUF Sabertooth all about.
You can be rest assured this will not be last board in the TUF sabertooth series from ASUS. There is already a P55 board and I am sure there will be more in the future.
TUF stands for "The Ultimate Force". There is nothing technical about the acronym. Its a marketing term. But what differentiate TUF series board from rest is the quality of components used.
ASUS is using high quality metal alloy chokes, high quality mosfets and capacitors. They call it military class components. And frankly you can tell something is very different about these components by just looking at it.
The motherboard uses very high quality Capacitors, solid metal alloy chokes, 150°C rated low RDS mosfets everywhere. All of which are ISO , IEC/IECQ certified military class components.
To add to that, the motherboard uses unique Ceram!x (again, a term used by Asus) heatsink coating technology which provide effective fanless cooling of critical components.
Also this motherboard will carry 5 year warranty, not 3 years like we are used to seeing in motherboard market.
All this is coupled with interesting military themed colour scheme giving this motherboard a unique look. And to top it off, all this in a board which sits in the price bracket of below Rs.14000/- making it a very interesting product.
Lets see the board in detail.
===================================================
Specifications.
First, the specifications. These are direct copy paste from ASUS sites as that serves the purpose.
As you can see, there is nothing that is skimped on this motherboard. It offers almost all the features you see on very high end motherboards like Rampage III series and Gigabyte UD5 and UD7. This is what makes this board exciting. It offers a lot more while costing lot less than its high end counterparts.
===================================================
The motherboard
The board comes in a greyish black box with fold away false top which advertises all the critical features of this motherboard. It's typical Asus packaging with different colour scheme to match the motherboard.
Coming to motherboard itself. It is full ATX motherboard with conventional and clean layout. You have their Ceram!x coated heatsinks cooling Sourthbridge, northbridge, and power supply MOSFETs.
Moving onto expansion slot area.
You get 3 PCI Express x16 slots. Out of those 2 brown coloured are full speed x16 slots for CrossfireX and SLI support. In addition to that you get 2 PCI express x1 slots and one PCI slot. You will not be able to use the PCI slot if you are going to use dual slot cards in crossfire or SLI setup. This is becoming more and more common these days and it is to be expected considering more and more add on cards are now moving onto PCI express bus.
The CMOS battery is located next to bottom PCI Express x1 slot sandwitched between black PCI express x16 slot and brown PCI Express x16 slot.At the bottom of the board, you have headers for SPDIF OUT, Firewire and USB. It is good to see 3 USB 2.0 headers for a change. Right next to USB header is a bios chip.
The bios chip is mounted on the removable socket. This is fantastic to see. This means, it is easy to replace the bios chip if something goes wrong and eventually it means shorter RMA turnaround.
Next to the bios chip is green power indication LED.
Coming to CPU socket are, you will find that is is very clean. The northbridge and MOSFET heatsinks are not too tall. You will not face clearance problems installing most tower heatsinks on this board. Heatpipe connects northbridge and one of the MOSFET heatsinks for extra cooling.
Here you can see the metal alloy chokes. Usually the normal chokes you see on various motherboards are rated at 24Amps. These are rated at 40AMps each. This gives you an idea the quality of components that went into making this board. The board has 8 phase CPU power supply. Even though it is just 8 Phase, trust me it will be enough for most people out there.
Here is the MOSFET heatsink which is removed from the board.
You can see that it is coated with some special coating which is suppose to help in heat dissipation. Under this you can see the TUF Low RDS mosfets and the EPU chip (ASUS's power management chip).
Next to CPU socket you can see 6 Memory slots to accommodate up to 24GB of DDR3 memory. The ATX 24 pin connector is right next to the last memory slot.
Next to memory slot is a tiny push button named as Memory OK!. This is suppose to help you boot in case you are facing issues related to memory compatibility or having issues booting with the new memory sticks. I could not test this personally as I never really encountered any such issue with my setup.
The ATX 12V connector is located at top edge on the left side of the board.
This is the large but flat southbridge heatsink.
And this is the northbridge heatsink.
This is SATA port area. 6 black ones are ICH10R SATA II 3Gbps ports and two white ones are SATA III 6Gbps ports powered by Marvell 9128 PCI express SATA controller.
This is the back I/O plate section. You get 6 USB 2.0 ports, 2 USB 3.0 ports, 2 eSATA ports one of which is powered eSATA (green) which is very good to see, Firewire port, one PS/2 port for mouse or keyboard and digital optical and analog audio ports.
Now this is interesting. The Sabertooth does not rely on just bios for voltage adjustments. You get two jumpers. The first one is this OC_CPU jumper. You will not need this for overclocking if you are on air or even water. This is there to safeguard user from accidentally pushing insane amount of voltages through the chip. Enabling OV_CPU gives you much greater range of voltages inside the bios. Trust me on this, unless you know what you are doing, keep it in its default position.
Same thing with memory. There is OV_DRAM_BUS jumper to unlock extreme memory voltage range. Above that you can see the Marvell SATA III controller chip.
You can see the NEC USB 3.0 chip in the picture above. This is connected directly to2 PCI express 2.0 lanes providing full speed USB 3.0 ports for this motherboard. Next to it you can see the Realtek Gigabit LAN controller.
Here you can see the input chokes of the memory power supply circuitry.
Here you can see JMicron SATA controller used to power the eSATA ports.
And here is ALC892 Audio chip.
And finally here is the bundle.
You get following items.
• Driver CD
• Cabinet switch header pins
• SATA II cables
• SATA III cable
• SLI Bridge
• Back IO shield
• Manual
That just about covers the motherboard. Lets move onto the bios.
===================================================
Bios.
ASUS is sticking to AMI bios. Anyone used to ASUS motherboard will feel right at home without any surprises or unknown tabs.
Its very standard. A.I Tweaker is the tab that will interest the overclockers here. It is comprehensive and yet ASUS has held back a bit here. It does not have all advanced options of Rampage III series somewhat limiting the ease with which you can extract maximum out of your memory. Other than this, everything else is there. Here are the bios screens. I have taken pics of one tab after another in the same sequence as they are in bios. This is pretty much self explanatory.
There are no complaints here.
This motherboard did hit BCLK wall at 220Mhz. moderate increase in VTT and PLL voltages, upping PCI express bus to 105 did not really do anything. It will boot, but will not load windows at 222Mhz + BCLK. With limited time for which I had this sample coupled with limited free time during the day meant I could not actually play with different bios versions (new one was released but no time to test). I will be building a system for a good friend with this motherboard soon, I will add any improvement I might be able to achieve that time here.
ASUS has held back in A.I Twekaer with couple of settings, but I guess they had to otherwise no one would buy Rampage
===================================================
The Test setup and overclocking
CPU : Intel Xeon W3520 Lapped IHS @ 4.2Ghz (1.200v vcore)
Motherboard : ASUS TUF series Sabertooth X58, Gigabyte X58A UD7 Rev 01.
RAM : Patriot Viper II DDR3 2000 at 1600Mhz 7-6-6-20 1T
Power Supply : Tagan BZ 1300W
Cabinet : Open Air Lian Li T60 Bench Table.
GPU : Zotac GTX 470 AMP!
I wanted to compare this motherboard against the motherboard in same price range. I even managed to get Gigabyte X58A UD3R Rev2.0. But unfortunate an accident with that board meant it had to go back for RMA. And this means this motherboard will have to fight the unfair battle with one of the best x58 motherboards money can buy today. The Gigabyte X58A UD7 original revision 1 board with 24 phase power supply.
Now this is little unfair to Sabertooth as Sabertooth lacks some of the minor tweaks found in the Rampage III Formula and Extreme motherboard and also in this UD7. Mainly the memory settings where I can set the memory to Turbo or Extreme setting which automatically tightens up the other numorous memory timings without me having to do it manually in Bios. Similar options are there in Rampage III boards, but are not present in Sabertooth bios. So only main timings were set manually to 7-6-6-20 CMD Rate 1 and rest was left to auto.
The board did manage to clock at 4.2Ghz relatively easy at same 1.200v as UD7 and same VTT voltage of 1.220v with rest all set to their original values manually (not left to auto). You can see that in the bios pictures.
So do please keep this in mind while watching the results.
===================================================
Benchmarks
===================================================
Everest CPU Benchmarks.
The actual screenshots are large image files of 400KB each. So I have not image linked them here. If anyone wants to check those out, click the links below. They are direct links.
CPU AES Sabertooth
http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/9606/cpuaessabertooth.jpg
CPU AES UD7
http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/7487/cpuaesud7.jpg
CPU photoworxx sabertooth
http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/4269/cpuphotoworxxsabertooth.jpg
CPU photoworxx UD7
http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/2994/cpuphotoworxxud7.jpg
CPU Queen Sabertooth
http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/9941/cpuqueensabertooth.jpg
CPU Queen UD7
http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/5530/cpuqueenud7.jpg
CPU Zlib sabertooth
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/589/cpuzlibsabertooth.jpg
CPU Zlib UD7
http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/7297/cpuzlibud7.jpg
===================================================
EVEREST FPU Benchmarks
FPU Julia sabertooth
http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/3128/fpujuliasabertooth.jpg
FPU Julia UD7
http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/6546/fpujuliaud7.jpg
FPU Mandel sabertooth
http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/3472/fpumandelsabertooth.jpg
FPU Mandel UD7
http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/1226/fpumandelud7.jpg
FPU SinJulia sabertooth
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/7699/fpusinjuliasabertooth.jpg
FPU SinJulia UD7
http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/9619/fpusinjuliaud7.jpg
===================================================
EVEREST CACHE AND MEMORY BENCHMARK
Everest cache and Memory sabertooth
Everest cache mem UD7
Except for memory copy where UD7 has a big lead, almost same figures on both the boards.
===================================================
3DMark Vantage 3D
Sabertooth
UD7
As you can see, marginally better performance on UD7. Its mainly down to CPU score. This is to be expected as there is almost 1Gbps difference in memory read bandwidth of the two boards and it does show up in the CPU performance score.
===================================================
Wprime 1024M
8 threads were selected for this run.
Sabertooth = 215.171s
UD7 = 215.169s
Its almost exactly same score in this benchmark.
===================================================
PCMark Vantage
Another semi-synthetic but important benchmark for comparative performance analysis.
Sabertooth
UD7
As you can see, UD7 has slight lead over Sabertooth. That is mainly pulled off in gaming performance benchmark.
===================================================
Video Encoding using Windows Media Encoder 9,
A short home clip was converted from AVCHD to WMV 720P HD 5000Kbps bitrate video and time taken for conversion was timed.
UD7 is approx. 13sec faster.
===================================================
Real world Gaming tests.
For motherboard reviews, I tend to pick the games which rely on entire system performance and not just CPU or GPU intensive. Hence my usual choice of FarCry 2 and HAWX.
Both games were updated and 260.89 drivers were used for Zotac GTX 470 AMP!
FarCry 2
Game settings : 1920x1200, DX10, 4xAA, Ultra High Game settings.
Sabertooth
UD7
Its dead heat. Almost identical scores on both.
Tomy Clancy's H.A.W.X.
Game settings : 1920x1200, DX10.1, 4xAA, Everything maxed out in game including Ambient occlusion which was set to very high.
UD7 is about 3FPS faster.
===================================================
Analysis, warranty, support and conclusion.
The Sabertooth is an interesting offering. As you have seen so far, it does manage to keep up with the high end offerings like UD7. This should come as no surprise as Nehalem architecture made this possible. So the motherboard selection in the end boils down to the feature set, value for money, brand preference and quality of the motherboard.
So far this sub Rs.14000 segment had one exceptionally good board. And that was Gigabyte x58 UD3R. There were couple of offerings from MSI, but they never really matched up with what UD3R had to offer with fantastic build quality, great performance which almost matched high end motherboards like UD5 and at the same time retaining all the good stuff.
Sabertooth takes this formula and takes it one level up. The motherboard is overbuilt. And its not a bad thing to say about an electronic item. It is meant to take a lot more torture than you will throw at it during usual use. And it does indeed feels built like a tank.
Add to that a fantastic performance and more than decent overclocking ability, it is a winner for sure. A perfect board to build a premium performance system at slightly non premium price. UD3R is no longer undisputed king of this category.
What about one category up? I tested this against UD7 which costs Rs.21500/-. And still it performed well against this board. So what is different between high end offerings like UD7 or Rampage III Extreme or Rampage III Formula and this board?
It's those last few Mhz, performance per clock, those extra fine tuning options in bios, that extra ethernet port, that extra cooling of UD7 that is why these premium board costs a lot more than something like Sabertooth x58 while offering not much extra if you look at the benchmark numbers at 24x7 speeds. UD7 can easily go well past 220Mhz BCLK. But then again it costs a arm and leg more than Sabertooth x58.
I can safely say that this is the motherboard you want to buy if you cannot stretch your budget beyond Rs.14000/- today. This will not be a choice of board to replace your existing x58a UD5 or x58A UD7 or Rampage III Extreme, but there is nothing better at this price. It boils down to the infamous after sales support.
This is the main reason ASUS lost ground in Indian market. There are some good people who are in charge of Asus sales and support at the moment. I had a chance to sit down with these folks a while back and they have come up with something that I think is worth mentioning here. This motherboard will carry 5 years warranty. Also Both Rashi and ASUS have been working hard over last few months to make things better and Asus has come out with a interesting warranty on its products exclusively for India.
For more details you can visit : ELITE2 Service
My only hope is that this stays and is executed as promised.
Highlights of this board
My Score Card
Design : 9/10
Performance : 8.5/10
Value: 9.5/10
Features: 8/10
Overall : 9/10
Please Digg this review
Digg - Asus Sabertooth X58 Review
Today I am brining you a review of ASUS TUF Series Sabertooth x58 motherboard. To be honest, the market is flooded with x58 motherboards, but until now, the sub 15k price range was dominated by Gigabyte and MSI motherboards with very little offerings from anyone else worth considering.
To be frank, when I first read the press release of this motherboard, the first thing pop into my mind was "Errr! what is that?". But that's the thing, it made an impression right away. It was different from other boards in the market. And when I first got to see it first hand, I asked ASUS to send it to me for the review and they obliged.
So lets begin without wasting more time.
===================================================
What is TUF Sabertooth all about.
You can be rest assured this will not be last board in the TUF sabertooth series from ASUS. There is already a P55 board and I am sure there will be more in the future.
TUF stands for "The Ultimate Force". There is nothing technical about the acronym. Its a marketing term. But what differentiate TUF series board from rest is the quality of components used.
ASUS is using high quality metal alloy chokes, high quality mosfets and capacitors. They call it military class components. And frankly you can tell something is very different about these components by just looking at it.
The motherboard uses very high quality Capacitors, solid metal alloy chokes, 150°C rated low RDS mosfets everywhere. All of which are ISO , IEC/IECQ certified military class components.
To add to that, the motherboard uses unique Ceram!x (again, a term used by Asus) heatsink coating technology which provide effective fanless cooling of critical components.
Also this motherboard will carry 5 year warranty, not 3 years like we are used to seeing in motherboard market.
All this is coupled with interesting military themed colour scheme giving this motherboard a unique look. And to top it off, all this in a board which sits in the price bracket of below Rs.14000/- making it a very interesting product.
Lets see the board in detail.
===================================================
Specifications.
First, the specifications. These are direct copy paste from ASUS sites as that serves the purpose.
As you can see, there is nothing that is skimped on this motherboard. It offers almost all the features you see on very high end motherboards like Rampage III series and Gigabyte UD5 and UD7. This is what makes this board exciting. It offers a lot more while costing lot less than its high end counterparts.
===================================================
The motherboard
The board comes in a greyish black box with fold away false top which advertises all the critical features of this motherboard. It's typical Asus packaging with different colour scheme to match the motherboard.
Coming to motherboard itself. It is full ATX motherboard with conventional and clean layout. You have their Ceram!x coated heatsinks cooling Sourthbridge, northbridge, and power supply MOSFETs.
Moving onto expansion slot area.
You get 3 PCI Express x16 slots. Out of those 2 brown coloured are full speed x16 slots for CrossfireX and SLI support. In addition to that you get 2 PCI express x1 slots and one PCI slot. You will not be able to use the PCI slot if you are going to use dual slot cards in crossfire or SLI setup. This is becoming more and more common these days and it is to be expected considering more and more add on cards are now moving onto PCI express bus.
The CMOS battery is located next to bottom PCI Express x1 slot sandwitched between black PCI express x16 slot and brown PCI Express x16 slot.At the bottom of the board, you have headers for SPDIF OUT, Firewire and USB. It is good to see 3 USB 2.0 headers for a change. Right next to USB header is a bios chip.
The bios chip is mounted on the removable socket. This is fantastic to see. This means, it is easy to replace the bios chip if something goes wrong and eventually it means shorter RMA turnaround.
Next to the bios chip is green power indication LED.
Coming to CPU socket are, you will find that is is very clean. The northbridge and MOSFET heatsinks are not too tall. You will not face clearance problems installing most tower heatsinks on this board. Heatpipe connects northbridge and one of the MOSFET heatsinks for extra cooling.
Here you can see the metal alloy chokes. Usually the normal chokes you see on various motherboards are rated at 24Amps. These are rated at 40AMps each. This gives you an idea the quality of components that went into making this board. The board has 8 phase CPU power supply. Even though it is just 8 Phase, trust me it will be enough for most people out there.
Here is the MOSFET heatsink which is removed from the board.
You can see that it is coated with some special coating which is suppose to help in heat dissipation. Under this you can see the TUF Low RDS mosfets and the EPU chip (ASUS's power management chip).
Next to CPU socket you can see 6 Memory slots to accommodate up to 24GB of DDR3 memory. The ATX 24 pin connector is right next to the last memory slot.
Next to memory slot is a tiny push button named as Memory OK!. This is suppose to help you boot in case you are facing issues related to memory compatibility or having issues booting with the new memory sticks. I could not test this personally as I never really encountered any such issue with my setup.
The ATX 12V connector is located at top edge on the left side of the board.
This is the large but flat southbridge heatsink.
And this is the northbridge heatsink.
This is SATA port area. 6 black ones are ICH10R SATA II 3Gbps ports and two white ones are SATA III 6Gbps ports powered by Marvell 9128 PCI express SATA controller.
This is the back I/O plate section. You get 6 USB 2.0 ports, 2 USB 3.0 ports, 2 eSATA ports one of which is powered eSATA (green) which is very good to see, Firewire port, one PS/2 port for mouse or keyboard and digital optical and analog audio ports.
Now this is interesting. The Sabertooth does not rely on just bios for voltage adjustments. You get two jumpers. The first one is this OC_CPU jumper. You will not need this for overclocking if you are on air or even water. This is there to safeguard user from accidentally pushing insane amount of voltages through the chip. Enabling OV_CPU gives you much greater range of voltages inside the bios. Trust me on this, unless you know what you are doing, keep it in its default position.
Same thing with memory. There is OV_DRAM_BUS jumper to unlock extreme memory voltage range. Above that you can see the Marvell SATA III controller chip.
You can see the NEC USB 3.0 chip in the picture above. This is connected directly to2 PCI express 2.0 lanes providing full speed USB 3.0 ports for this motherboard. Next to it you can see the Realtek Gigabit LAN controller.
Here you can see the input chokes of the memory power supply circuitry.
Here you can see JMicron SATA controller used to power the eSATA ports.
And here is ALC892 Audio chip.
And finally here is the bundle.
You get following items.
• Driver CD
• Cabinet switch header pins
• SATA II cables
• SATA III cable
• SLI Bridge
• Back IO shield
• Manual
That just about covers the motherboard. Lets move onto the bios.
===================================================
Bios.
ASUS is sticking to AMI bios. Anyone used to ASUS motherboard will feel right at home without any surprises or unknown tabs.
Its very standard. A.I Tweaker is the tab that will interest the overclockers here. It is comprehensive and yet ASUS has held back a bit here. It does not have all advanced options of Rampage III series somewhat limiting the ease with which you can extract maximum out of your memory. Other than this, everything else is there. Here are the bios screens. I have taken pics of one tab after another in the same sequence as they are in bios. This is pretty much self explanatory.
There are no complaints here.
This motherboard did hit BCLK wall at 220Mhz. moderate increase in VTT and PLL voltages, upping PCI express bus to 105 did not really do anything. It will boot, but will not load windows at 222Mhz + BCLK. With limited time for which I had this sample coupled with limited free time during the day meant I could not actually play with different bios versions (new one was released but no time to test). I will be building a system for a good friend with this motherboard soon, I will add any improvement I might be able to achieve that time here.
ASUS has held back in A.I Twekaer with couple of settings, but I guess they had to otherwise no one would buy Rampage
===================================================
The Test setup and overclocking
CPU : Intel Xeon W3520 Lapped IHS @ 4.2Ghz (1.200v vcore)
Motherboard : ASUS TUF series Sabertooth X58, Gigabyte X58A UD7 Rev 01.
RAM : Patriot Viper II DDR3 2000 at 1600Mhz 7-6-6-20 1T
Power Supply : Tagan BZ 1300W
Cabinet : Open Air Lian Li T60 Bench Table.
GPU : Zotac GTX 470 AMP!
I wanted to compare this motherboard against the motherboard in same price range. I even managed to get Gigabyte X58A UD3R Rev2.0. But unfortunate an accident with that board meant it had to go back for RMA. And this means this motherboard will have to fight the unfair battle with one of the best x58 motherboards money can buy today. The Gigabyte X58A UD7 original revision 1 board with 24 phase power supply.
Now this is little unfair to Sabertooth as Sabertooth lacks some of the minor tweaks found in the Rampage III Formula and Extreme motherboard and also in this UD7. Mainly the memory settings where I can set the memory to Turbo or Extreme setting which automatically tightens up the other numorous memory timings without me having to do it manually in Bios. Similar options are there in Rampage III boards, but are not present in Sabertooth bios. So only main timings were set manually to 7-6-6-20 CMD Rate 1 and rest was left to auto.
The board did manage to clock at 4.2Ghz relatively easy at same 1.200v as UD7 and same VTT voltage of 1.220v with rest all set to their original values manually (not left to auto). You can see that in the bios pictures.
So do please keep this in mind while watching the results.
===================================================
Benchmarks
===================================================
Everest CPU Benchmarks.
The actual screenshots are large image files of 400KB each. So I have not image linked them here. If anyone wants to check those out, click the links below. They are direct links.
CPU AES Sabertooth
http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/9606/cpuaessabertooth.jpg
CPU AES UD7
http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/7487/cpuaesud7.jpg
CPU photoworxx sabertooth
http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/4269/cpuphotoworxxsabertooth.jpg
CPU photoworxx UD7
http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/2994/cpuphotoworxxud7.jpg
CPU Queen Sabertooth
http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/9941/cpuqueensabertooth.jpg
CPU Queen UD7
http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/5530/cpuqueenud7.jpg
CPU Zlib sabertooth
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/589/cpuzlibsabertooth.jpg
CPU Zlib UD7
http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/7297/cpuzlibud7.jpg
===================================================
EVEREST FPU Benchmarks
FPU Julia sabertooth
http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/3128/fpujuliasabertooth.jpg
FPU Julia UD7
http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/6546/fpujuliaud7.jpg
FPU Mandel sabertooth
http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/3472/fpumandelsabertooth.jpg
FPU Mandel UD7
http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/1226/fpumandelud7.jpg
FPU SinJulia sabertooth
http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/7699/fpusinjuliasabertooth.jpg
FPU SinJulia UD7
http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/9619/fpusinjuliaud7.jpg
===================================================
EVEREST CACHE AND MEMORY BENCHMARK
Everest cache and Memory sabertooth
Everest cache mem UD7
Except for memory copy where UD7 has a big lead, almost same figures on both the boards.
===================================================
3DMark Vantage 3D
Sabertooth
UD7
As you can see, marginally better performance on UD7. Its mainly down to CPU score. This is to be expected as there is almost 1Gbps difference in memory read bandwidth of the two boards and it does show up in the CPU performance score.
===================================================
Wprime 1024M
8 threads were selected for this run.
Sabertooth = 215.171s
UD7 = 215.169s
Its almost exactly same score in this benchmark.
===================================================
PCMark Vantage
Another semi-synthetic but important benchmark for comparative performance analysis.
Sabertooth
UD7
As you can see, UD7 has slight lead over Sabertooth. That is mainly pulled off in gaming performance benchmark.
===================================================
Video Encoding using Windows Media Encoder 9,
A short home clip was converted from AVCHD to WMV 720P HD 5000Kbps bitrate video and time taken for conversion was timed.
UD7 is approx. 13sec faster.
===================================================
Real world Gaming tests.
For motherboard reviews, I tend to pick the games which rely on entire system performance and not just CPU or GPU intensive. Hence my usual choice of FarCry 2 and HAWX.
Both games were updated and 260.89 drivers were used for Zotac GTX 470 AMP!
FarCry 2
Game settings : 1920x1200, DX10, 4xAA, Ultra High Game settings.
Sabertooth
UD7
Its dead heat. Almost identical scores on both.
Tomy Clancy's H.A.W.X.
Game settings : 1920x1200, DX10.1, 4xAA, Everything maxed out in game including Ambient occlusion which was set to very high.
UD7 is about 3FPS faster.
===================================================
Analysis, warranty, support and conclusion.
The Sabertooth is an interesting offering. As you have seen so far, it does manage to keep up with the high end offerings like UD7. This should come as no surprise as Nehalem architecture made this possible. So the motherboard selection in the end boils down to the feature set, value for money, brand preference and quality of the motherboard.
So far this sub Rs.14000 segment had one exceptionally good board. And that was Gigabyte x58 UD3R. There were couple of offerings from MSI, but they never really matched up with what UD3R had to offer with fantastic build quality, great performance which almost matched high end motherboards like UD5 and at the same time retaining all the good stuff.
Sabertooth takes this formula and takes it one level up. The motherboard is overbuilt. And its not a bad thing to say about an electronic item. It is meant to take a lot more torture than you will throw at it during usual use. And it does indeed feels built like a tank.
Add to that a fantastic performance and more than decent overclocking ability, it is a winner for sure. A perfect board to build a premium performance system at slightly non premium price. UD3R is no longer undisputed king of this category.
What about one category up? I tested this against UD7 which costs Rs.21500/-. And still it performed well against this board. So what is different between high end offerings like UD7 or Rampage III Extreme or Rampage III Formula and this board?
It's those last few Mhz, performance per clock, those extra fine tuning options in bios, that extra ethernet port, that extra cooling of UD7 that is why these premium board costs a lot more than something like Sabertooth x58 while offering not much extra if you look at the benchmark numbers at 24x7 speeds. UD7 can easily go well past 220Mhz BCLK. But then again it costs a arm and leg more than Sabertooth x58.
I can safely say that this is the motherboard you want to buy if you cannot stretch your budget beyond Rs.14000/- today. This will not be a choice of board to replace your existing x58a UD5 or x58A UD7 or Rampage III Extreme, but there is nothing better at this price. It boils down to the infamous after sales support.
This is the main reason ASUS lost ground in Indian market. There are some good people who are in charge of Asus sales and support at the moment. I had a chance to sit down with these folks a while back and they have come up with something that I think is worth mentioning here. This motherboard will carry 5 years warranty. Also Both Rashi and ASUS have been working hard over last few months to make things better and Asus has come out with a interesting warranty on its products exclusively for India.
For more details you can visit : ELITE2 Service
My only hope is that this stays and is executed as promised.
Highlights of this board
- Excellent built quality
- Very good value (Retail price of Below Rs.13000)
- 5 Years warranty
- Very good performance
- Looks (subjective)
My Score Card
Design : 9/10
Performance : 8.5/10
Value: 9.5/10
Features: 8/10
Overall : 9/10
Please Digg this review
Digg - Asus Sabertooth X58 Review
. This way its easier to keep a track to see whether there is a significant improvement after implementing elite 2.0!
